Josh Rosenkranz Named AmLaw “Litigator of the Week” for the 5th Time

Dubbed the “the Defibrillator” by AmLaw for his ability to revive the toughest cases, Josh Rosenkranz did it again for our client Oracle in this most recent matchup at the Federal Circuit, earning him AmLaw’s Litigator of the Week honors for the fifth time. “Appellate courts don’t like overturning jury verdicts,” The American Lawyer reported. “Until this week, none is known to have overturned a jury verdict of fair use in a copyright infringement case.” But that is exactly what Josh and our team convinced the court to do. A three-judge Federal Circuit panel unanimously overturned a 2016 jury verdict, rejecting Google’s argument that it was fair use for Google to copy Oracle’s Java software code into Google’s Android operating system. The Court ordered a new trial on damages, adopting the central arguments developed by Orrick and Oracle’s in-house legal department.

The American Lawyer has also honored Josh twice as Litigator of the Year.

A former law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. and
then-Judge Antonin Scalia on the D.C. Circuit, Josh has personally
argued more than 190 appeals in state and federal appellate courts across the
nation, including 17 before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Josh is the only lawyer ever named American Lawyer's “Litigator
of the Year” twice. In 2012, the magazine dubbed him “the Defibrillator” based
on his streak of appellate wins for companies that “appeared to be at death’s
door,” and in 2017 it declared, he “still deserves the moniker we once gave
him.”

Chambers USA has
reported, “He wins accolades for his ‘brilliant analysis and judgment.’ Clients
appreciate how he ‘rethinks every case from the ground up,’ and add: ‘He can
take the most complicated legal or technological issue and present it in a way
that seems like common sense.’” Another edition of Chambers USA added: “‘His briefs are quite
simply beautiful,’” and “clients describe his courtroom presence as ‘both
commanding and accessible at the same time.’ He has the ‘perfect combination of
persuasiveness, intelligence, wit, and deference.’”

Clients turn to Josh to win the highest stakes appeals, including appeals in cases that threaten the very survival of a business. He is currently representing Microsoft in an international cause célèbre in the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the U.S. Government’s claim that it can serve warrants for emails stored overseas. He represented DISH Network in one of the most high-profile patent appeals in the country, successfully overturning an infringement finding that yielded $400 million in damages and an injunction that ordered the satellite TV company to turn off the recording capabilities of millions of customers. He represented Facebook in the high-profile battle waged by the founder's Harvard classmates who laid claim to the idea for Facebook, winning a ruling from the Ninth Circuit to end the lawsuit. He represented Apple in the "smartphone wars" in an appeal about the validity of the patent on Apple's revolutionary touchscreen.

In 2005, he successfully represented Merck KGaA in a Supreme Court case that the National Law Journal described as “the most significant patent infringement case to confront the biotech and pharmaceutical industries in a generation.” He represented 36 law schools in a high-profile Supreme Court case against the Department of Defense. He also argued and won a case that many consider to be the most important employee benefits case of the decade. And in March 2013, he won a landmark victory in a Supreme Court case that rescued the estimated $60 billion U.S. market of copyrighted goods manufactured abroad.

Josh was the founding president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, one of the country’s foremost public interest firms. Over the course of eight years, he was the Brennan Center’s chief strategist on litigation and public policy advocacy. Under his direction, the center represented parties in connection with more than 50 cases (including three at the U.S. Supreme Court) and filed almost 40 amicus briefs (including 20 at the U.S. Supreme Court). Before creating the Brennan Center, Josh founded the Office of the Appellate Defender, a public defender office specializing in criminal appeals in New York state courts.

Josh has published numerous books, monographs, chapters and scholarly articles. He has also authored 18 op-eds or articles in major newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Time, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Monthly, The Boston Review, The National Law Journal, and The American Prospect.

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